“We are living in times when people cling to the wreckage of their sinking orthodoxies as if to salvation and aggressively continue to promote the very ideas which have led to their predicament. All we can hope, I suppose, is that, in their enthusiasm for self-destruction, they don’t drag the rest of us down with them. Violent grinning, canned orchestral music, empathic neighbourliness, vigorous hand-clapping, enthusiastic show-business presentation, and simplified hymn-singing is now substitute for real spiritual substance and that, it seems to me, demonstrates the crisis of many Christian churches at present…”

That was written twenty years ago (1996) by British writer Michael Moorcock for the 30th anniversary edition of his brilliant novel, Behold the Man. It is the story of Karl Glogauer, a man who travels from the year 1970 in a time machine to 28 AD, where he hopes to meet the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Behold the Man, firmly planted on my list of the ten best SF novels ever, won the 1967 Nebula Award a year after its initial publication.

The comment above was written in context of how the original had been received when first published, which included strong, positive reviews in the religious press in his home country. It was only when the book made its way to these shores that he began to receive death threats, “mostly from the Bible Belt, almost all from Texas.”

The strain of madness in our culture is nothing new. What is new is that it has bubbled to the surface and no one can pretend it doesn’t exist any longer. Some will try, of course, as we are not seeing from the liberal media elite (that great, non-existent bogyman of the Right) and the scared-to-death, chickens-with-their-heads-cut-off crowd that is residue of the GOP Establishment. The latter are getting what they deserve. Sadly, though, what they sowed we all are reaping.

Charles Pierce has covered this topic a zillion times or more (“the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin and first runner-up in our most recent vice presidential pageant”), so I am treading on somewhat familiar ground here, but how the hell did Paul Ryan suddenly become this brilliant political genius who is working the system five levels above everybody else in the minds of the media? Seriously, how did this happen?

Last night’s Lawrence O’Donnell show, which I watched just because I had a beer to finish before hitting the sack, was a perfect example. O’Donnell spent 15, maybe 20 minutes picturing the days’ GOP Summit of All Summits as an event where Ryan brilliantly schooled “Little Donnie” (okay, that as worth the time I spent and is so far the one Trump-like insult that I think is likely to get the insult master’s goat) in every aspect of governing.

No.

Paul Ryan is trying to hang onto his political future. It was seriously damaged when, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he did not ever carry his own state or even his district and is in serious trouble right now (though the media never mentions it) because he can barely control the House of which he is the putative leader. As Speaker, he’s become John Boehner without the tears and bourbon. O’Donnell’s smirking proclamations of his brilliance were just plain awful…and he’s one of the few people at MSNBC it’s even tolerable to watch these days (if it had been the Chris Matthews interviews Chris Matthews show, guests be damned, I would have dumped the beer and turn off the set.

Then again, it is very likely that the Liberal Media Elite (that’s a joke, son) will work very hard this summer and fall to build up any and all GOP-ers that it can, not only because said media desperately needs a contested election to make it all relevant, but also because it’s what they do. Check out this guy’s blog for ongoing examples of that tendency, because he’s all over it. Here’s an example:

WARNING: A Trump/Gingrich ticket might seem like comedy gold, but I worry about the baffling level of respect for Newt in the mainstream media. Yes, Trump gets a lot of uncritical coverage, but there are also quite very negative stories about him. By contrast, Gingrich’s World’s Foremost Authority act always seems to bamboozle journalists and pundits, at least on broadcast and cable TV. Maybe this time around he won’t be deferred to as the all-knowing Doctor of Thinkology. But if he gets that kind of deference again, even as a surrogate for someone who’s even more of a snake-oil salesman than he is, I won’t be surprised.

Like this:

It’s been a rough stretch for all sorts of political commentators of late, most especially for those who do so with pen and ink and try to bring a touch of humor to what they have to say. But last Thursday brought respite…

Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968.In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.

The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.

We now know that was because President Johnson, who privately had called Nixon’s Vietnam actions “treason,” had ordered the file removed from the White House by his national security aide Walt Rostow.

Share this:

Like this:

Earlier today I said that the best comment about Marco Rubio’s amateur hour last night was “Rubio mistakenly puts Tea Party 2013 convention speech in the teleprompter.” I was wrong. It was this, at Huffington Post:

Marco Rubio’s curious speech post the State of the Union address last night will mostly be remembered for his desperate lurch for the water bottle. But two things about it baffle me.

I thought his effort was entirely tone deaf, thus cementing it in the current GOP style: miss the point, argue against things your opponent never said nor advocated, try to be funny/snarky and come across as just mean instead. My favorite tweet of the night (this is from memory so may note be verbatim): “Rubio mistakenly puts Tea Party 2013 convention speech in the teleprompter.”

However, certain commentators I might not have expected to thought it was just fine. My favorite internet popper of dubious balloons, Paul Pierce, had kind words for it in his first post today (he’s since come back to reality) and, on MSNBC last night, the not-nearly-as-smart-as-everybody-thinks-she-isRachel Maddow initially reacted favorably as well, while the not-nearly-as-smart-as-HE-thinks-he-isChris Matthews, usually a total sucker for fluff and platitudes, tore the speech apart. That was definitely a reversal of roles.

But what got me most was this Rubio comment about his parents:

“I didn’t inherit any money from them.”

Whoa, did somebody accuse him of inheriting money and I missed it? Can it be that he has abandoned the standard GOP position* that inherited money is absolutely the best kind of money? If not, what was the purpose of this non sequitur?

*That’s “the standard GOP position” for Old School Repubs, of course, the country club crowd; the best kind of money for the younger set (Palin et al) is grifter money.

Share this:

Like this:

This comment by a reader of the Talking Points Memo site seems to me to be spot on re: the developing Chris Christie, GOP Savior” meme among the political press (and, yes, I am _appalled_ by my contributing to the ridiculous discussion of the 2016 election at this point but it’s cold and snowy out there and a guy’s gotta do something to fill the time, so what the hell):

I think that Chris Christie can be related to another Republican politician whose presidential ambitions, once seen as highly realistic, faded because his personality became too apparent–Rudy Giuliani.

Like Christie, Giuliani was a bombastic executive who rose to prominence as a tough-as-nails prosecutor in bare-knuckles US Attorneys’ offices. They both tended to “wear their emotions on their sleeve” as you very generously put it. Or put another way, Christie and Giuliani are both assholes.

Giuliani’s personality was both the key to his political success, as well as the surest reason for its failure. He beat an unpopular incumbent, his tough love for a tough city was seen as the key in turning New York City around. But by the summer of 2001 he had become somewhat unpopular. His style of leadership was once again effective on 9/11 and its immediate aftermath. Giuliani’s presidential campaign started off with him as the far-and-away front-runner, but suffered because he lost support as people got to know him. Ultimately, the asshole attitude did not play.

Christie similarly beat an unpopular opponent and his “no nonsense” approach earned praise in tough times. But he was facing a tough re-election (at best a 50-50 chance) until Sandy gave him an opportunity to once again showcase his tough (and possibly by necessity bi-partisan) approach, winning him plaudits in a time of emergency, and scaring off his most serious Democratic challengers.

I suspect that like Giuliani, Christie’s personality is likely to grate on the public once the emergency has passed. It’s not a surprise that both are from the New York/New Jersey area. Let’s face it; other “heart on the sleeve” politicians (with attitudes often less pronounced than Christie and Giuliani) from the area who are popular in their home state–Anthony Weiner (before Weiner-gate), Chuck Schumer, Peter King–don’t play as well on the national stage. For whatever reasons (and, there are good and many bad reasons), what is endearing in the New York metro area is not endearing at Iowa Fairs and New Hampshire Town Meetings.

True, Giuliani had more pronounced problems from a policy standpoint–being a thrice married pro-choice, pro gay rights, pro gun control urban mayor is probably the exact opposite of the profile of a Republican presidential candidate. But some–or at least enough–of Christie’s appeal has been a willingness to take moderate positions, and that may play even worse in a 2016 Republican Primary than it did in 2008.

(A last note–Christie’s public blow-up is remarkably uncalled for. The apparent health of a President or presidential candidate is a matter of public interest. Certainly whether Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, or John McCain were central issues in their campaigns–and whether Joe Biden might would certainly be, if that campaign comes to pass–a pretty obvious health risk like Christie’s is fair game. It may well gnaw on him personally, and I have sympathy for that, but telling her in a press conference to “shut up” is just plain wrong from a political standpoint–putting aside the bizarre personal call to her afterwards.)

NOTE: This post originally appeared in my Facebook feed in a slightly different form.

The true problem, as yet unaddressed by any Republican standard-bearer, originates in the ideology of modern conservatism. When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s, they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually fierce South Carolinian John C. Calhoun. This is not to say conservatives today share Calhoun’s ideas about race. It is to say instead that the Calhoun revival, based on his complex theories of constitutional democracy, became the justification for conservative politicians to resist, ignore, or even overturn the will of the electoral majority.

This is the politics of nullification, the doctrine, nearly as old as the republic itself, which holds that the states, singly or in concert, can defy federal actions by declaring them invalid or simply ignoring them. We hear the echoes of nullification in the venting of anti-government passions and also in campaigns to “starve government,” curtail voter registration, repeal legislation, delegitimize presidents. There is a strong sectionalist bias in these efforts. They flourish in just the places Kevin Phillips identified as Republican strongholds—Plains, Mountain, but mainly Southern states, where change invites suspicion, especially when it seems invasive, and government is seen as an intrusive force. Yet those same resisters—most glaringly, Tea Partiers—cherish the entitlements and benefits provided by “Big Government.” Their objections come when outsider groups ask for consideration, too. Even recent immigrants to this country sense the “hidden hand” of Calhoun’s style of dissent, the extended lineage of rearguard politics, with its aggrieved call, heard so often today, “to take back America”—that is, to take America back to the “better” place it used to be. Today’s conservatives have fully embraced this tradition, enshrining it as their own “Lost cause,” redolent with the moral consolations of noble defeat.

NOTE: This post first appeared on Facebook in slightly different form. See the post which will appear above this one when I get around to posting it for an explanation.

Like this:

Start by claiming that raising the debt limit is a big ask to create a rationale for demanding a price. Then downplay the consequences of failing to act, so that Republicans keep their nerve, and the administration looks petulant for not agreeing to horse trade.

But both arguments are so unmoored from reality, you wonder why the GOP would bother making them if they didn’t recognize that their real play here is so politically noxious. “Cut Medicare benefits or we’ll gratuitously destroy the economy” isn’t a big winner.

But as much as they’d like to pretend otherwise, even the best-case-scenario post-debt limit breach would be hugely damaging to the economy.

When we are at the next “cliff” (the current version of “gate”). don’t say I didn’t warn you. The 2012 Election is not over; it’s barely begun.

Prowling through the archives just now looking for a post I vaguely remember which, if it exists, has some information that would brighten up a column I am trying to write, I ran across this instead. Enjoy. Or ignore. Whatever … Continue reading →

So this is something I did today because I felt like doing something today in lieu of straightening up the mess that is my desk. I mean, who knows what horrors might lie at the bottom of pile #2? This … Continue reading →